“Rate hikes are far off,” wrote Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s chief Fed watcher, in a note to clients late Thursday. “Our central forecast for the first hike remains early 2016, although the risks now tilt in the direction of a slightly earlier move.”

The latest call came after U.S. stock and bond markets sold off Wednesday after the Fed’s latest policy announcement raised worries that the first rate hike could come during the spring of 2015. Fears have eased over the past two days as U.S. stocks rebound and the bond market has stabilized, but analysts warn more chopping trade ahead as debate over the Fed’s interest-rate policy outlook continues to be the key focus of financial markets.

Some banks revised their Fed calls. Bank of America Merrill Lynch now expects the Fed will start hiking rates in the fourth quarter of 2015, earlier than its previous forecast of the first-quarter of 2016. Some other Fed watchers didn’t change their forecasts, either. Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Pierpont Securities, still expects the first rate hike in the third quarter of 2015.

But Mr. Hatzius believes a rate hike may not come at all in 2015. He cited several factors to back his argument as below:

“First, we do not think that Yellen meant to send a strong signal of a shift in the reaction function. Second, while we agree that the most likely path for growth is a pickup to a 3%+ pace, the risk to this forecast is on the downside. Third, we expect a more gradual return to 2% inflation than the FOMC. Fourth, we see a significant risk that a tightening of financial conditions in the run-up to the first rate hike will delay the first hike, much as last summer’s “taper tantrum” delayed the actual move to QE tapering.”

Both U.S. stocks and bonds took a beating Wednesday as investors were spooked by two factors.

One, Fed officials expect short-term interest rates to rise more quickly than they previously predicted. The median Fed forecast now calls for the fed funds target rate, the central bank’s key policy rate, to be at 1% at the end of 2015 and 2.25% at the end of 2016. In December, the median Fed rate forecast for those time frames was 0.75% and 1.75%, respectively.

Further raising angst over higher interest rates, Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said in a press briefing after the Fed meeting that the first rate increase might come “six months” after the Fed ends its bond-buying program, which is on track to happen before the end of this year.

The Fed has held its policy rate between zero and 0.25% since December 2008 to support the economy.

A key factor driving market expectations on the path of interest rate policy lies in how the U.S. economy performs. Investors will zero in on upcoming data to see whether or not a slew of soft data this quarter has been driven by the harsh winter.

For bond yields to rise in coming months, “we need the economy to cooperate along the way,” said Thomas Roth, executive director in the U.S. government bond trading group at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities (USA) Inc. in New York. “There is still a lot of time to go before we even get to the end of the bond-buying program, so a lot can happen.”

Given the uncertainty, traders and analysts expect the 10-year yield to trade between 2.5% and 3% for the foreseeable future.

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